Assad Wages War Shielded With a Smile

Published: September 3, 2013

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The Syrian government has a long history of bloody rivalry with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement. So when one of the guests referred to Mohamed Morsi, the deposed president of Egypt and a Brotherhood leader, as a donkey, Mr. Assad interjected that the remark insulted the animal, Mr. Maqtari said in an interview in Beirut.

The Instagram account established by the presidential palace pumps out a constant stream of carefully staged pictures showing the president and his wife carrying out their official functions. Here he is giving a speech about economic development, even as the economy has virtually ceased to function. There she is sweating over a huge vat of food to be distributed to the families of fallen soldiers for the feast marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

Some observers noted with glee that Mrs. Assad, a former investment banker raised in Britain, sported on her right wrist a turquoise Jawbone Up, a trendy, roughly $100 gadget to track diet, sleep and exercise routines. The constant data stream is meant to goad users to improve their habits.

The war has curbed the couple’s unscripted public appearances. Mortar shells have crashed into Malki, the leafy upscale neighborhood of Damascus where they still live with their three children.

In early August, mortars struck in the vicinity of the presidential motorcade as Mr. Assad left home for the morning prayer marking the close of Ramadan, opposition activists said. One activist said everyone walking on the street at the time was arrested — with a friend’s brother released after two weeks. “They are very nervous,” she said of government leaders.

The reality is that the war has entered a stalemate, and while Mr. Assad’s forces have scored some recent victories, he presides over a fraction of Syria. His violent reaction to the uprising led what was once a proudly secular society into a largely sectarian conflict between the majority Sunni Muslims and his small minority of Alawites, an obscure branch of Shiite Islam.

“For him there is nothing to lose,” a Damascus-based analyst said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “He cannot compromise. He has to see this through. He cannot rebuild; he cannot reconcile. He is stuck. He can rule over a pile of rubble — that is the best he can do.”

The state propaganda apparatus seized on President Obama’s decision to submit the proposed attack to a Congressional vote as a great victory for Mr. Assad, referring to it as a “historic American retreat” and portraying anyone insufficiently vocal in support of the government as a “traitor.”

“The fact that it is being threatened is a very comfortable zone for this regime, which has been under threats and sanctions for decades,” said Fadi Salem, a Syrian political analyst based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “It is a playground where they are very good at playing.”

If Mr. Assad maintained a calm demeanor, the threat of an American attack rattled many, particularly government supporters. Syrians wondered how far the Americans would go — something drastic or something limited to signal disapproval of what the White House said was a poison gas attack that killed more than 1,400 people in the Damascus suburbs on Aug. 21.

Ayman Abdel Nour, a college friend of the president’s who now opposes him, said Mr. Assad had been assuring those around him — including the knot of relatives who remain his closest advisers — that the West was bluffing. The president argued that Washington would not move to unseat him because the main alternative, the increasingly Islamist opposition, was far worse in Western eyes. That also appears to be the main basis for much of the support he has left among Syrians.

“This is what Bashar Assad has told the top elite: that it will be a cosmetic attack,” Mr. Abdel Nour said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. “They believe it deeply.”

With such an opaque government, discerning its real thoughts can be a challenge. But many analysts believe that a cosmetic attack would help rejuvenate Mr. Assad’s fortunes, at least temporarily, adding to the decades-long list of confrontations with the West in which Syria has prevailed merely by waiting out the uproar, by surviving.

International pressure over accusations that Mr. Assad’s government carried out the 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s leading politician, Rafik Hariri, was once so great, that he was forced to withdraw all Syrian troops from Lebanon, for example. But the outrage gradually dissipated.

The Assads think that they will prevail this time as they always have.

“He is playing again like his father, skirting the edge of the abyss,” Mr. Abdel Nour said. “You might win, but one centimeter difference and you might fall.”